home
Original art shows that artists wrote the stories
Jim Van Heuklon
6 July 2016
excerpt from the new IDW Jack Kirby Thor book. Who wrote these stories
again? Stan must have been great at painting by numbers.
Patrick Ford: "mere" "thunder of" Typical Lee diarrhea of the mouth.
It appears that Wolf was the name of the villain created by Kirby
which Lee called The Man-Beast."
Jim Van Heuklon: ah, the memories...this was the first Jack Kirby
drawn book I ever owned.
Patrick Ford: These books are way out of my families household budget
so I'll never own one so feel free to post other examples from the
book.
Jim Van Heuklon: This is the first and probably only IDW book I'll
ever buy. Mine is ordered
Jim Van Heuklon: another shot
Patrick Ford: I was tempted by the STERANKO Vol. one simply because I
wanted to see the three issues with Kirby's extensive story notes
which Lee described as "layouts." In the end I spent my money
elsewhere.
Jim Van Heuklon: another page although the notes might not be legible.
Once I get mine, I'll post more.
Patrick Ford
March 6, 2018
TALES TO ASTONISH #83. Lee follows Kirby's dialogue notes almost verbatim.
On Lee's dialog, and finding original copies
6 July 2016
Patrick Ford: "Surrender Wolf who art man --- While thou hast the chance."
That crap is indefensible. Has anyone actually sat down and read Lee's
drivel since they were eight? The nerve of the people who defend his
dialogue is amazing.
Michael Hill: "If you're not a fan of the work, the objectivity of
your comments is suspect."
Patrick Ford: Michael Hill, Said who?
Michael Hill: Said a fan of Lee when confronted with facts.
Patrick Ford: The opposite is at least as true. How can a fan of the
work be objective?
I've had this issue with Marvel fans before. In general they are more
willing to be critical of Lee than they are Marvel. A lot of them get
to the point where they accept or even promote criticism of Lee, but
they can't deal with the idea that a fan of Kirby does not like the
Silver Age Marvel comics.
I recall an instance where I replied to an article by Mike Gartland
and told him there was no "we" when it came to describing Silver Age
Marvel as "the comics we all love."
Mike insisted there was a "we." So I said I had not realized he was
writing for readers who were all assumed to be fans of Silver Age
Marvel. I had made the mistake of thinking he was writing for the
public.
Patrick Ford: I thought Mike's reply was pretty strange. I liked all
his articles and yet he had no problem saying he was writing for a
group of people who did not include me. And yet the "we" he was
writing for were continuously attacking him and attempting to run his
column out of TJKC...which in fact they did.
Michael Hill: Yeah, that's kind of sad. He wouldn't be allowed to
remain part of the "we" either.
Michael Hill: That's great, Jim. I wish they had the technology to do
the side-by-side pencils and inks like the upcoming Kamandi-Demon-OMAC
Artisan edition, but that would require time travel. I'd like to see
some of these pages with the margin notes photoshopped into the
balloons.
Patrick Ford: Not to mention there is no pressing need to do a pencils
to inks comparison on books dialogued by Kirby and inked by Michael
Royer.
Michael Hill: And most of the Marvel copies of Kirby's pencils were
taken *after* the lettering, so there's no escaping Lee's
"contribution."
Patrick Ford: True as far as we know. However, it is possible we don't
know. There are the full size of the original art pencil copies from
FF #63 (?) which do not contain the lettering.
Those were never known to exist prior to them showing up for sale.
Or at least the people at Marvel (Thomas, Lee, Trimpe, etc.) who must
have known about them never mentioned them. And we still don't know
where they came from or how many there are. If there are more, and why
they were made.
It wouldn't surprise me if Marvel, or former or current Marvel
employees, have thousands of copies.
They will leak out as people die or decide to cash in, but it will
probably never be known who has them or why they (the large copies)
were made.
Michael Hill: TJKC had a few pages like this from FF Annual #5.
Patrick Ford: Those were a third type of copy. There seem to be three
types of copies from the Silver Age.
1. Digest sized stats, made after the pages were lettered but before
they were inked, which Marvel supplied to Jack Kirby.
2. The full size of the original art stats made before the pencils
were penciled or inked. These were not known to anyone outside Marvel
until some showed up for sale at Heritage.
3. The velox copies for FF Annual #5 which I believe are digest sized
and were made prior to the pencils being inked and lettered.
Michael Hill: A useful reference would be all the known Kirby margin
notes. I would say side by side with the published dialogue, but I'd
probably cut off the more verbose side after a single reading to save
space and aid digestion. How about written into the captions and
balloons on Essential-size transparencies?
home